Whom will he teach knowledge? To whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts?
⛓ Read Isaiah 28 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Echo3
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Paul's contrast of milk for 'babies in Christ' versus solid food evokes Isaiah's taunt about teaching knowledge to those weaned from milk and just drawn from the breasts. Both passages use infancy and weaning as a figure for spiritual immaturity and incapacity to receive deeper instruction. Coherence with Paul's pedagogical-maturity theme is strong, and Isaiah 28 is recurrent in this letter's milieu of prophetic critique, though the verbal link rests on the shared milk/infancy metaphor rather than direct citation.
Medium confidenceIsaiah's mockery of those still needing 'milk' / 'weaned from the breast' parallels 'no longer children.' Volume is low and the link is thematic (spiritual infancy), so the echo is faint and contested.
Low confidenceThe milk-versus-maturity reproach (vv. 12–13) faintly echoes Isaiah's taunt that only the ‘weaned from the milk’ can receive teaching. Low verbal volume — the milk/solid-food trope is a wisdom commonplace (cf. 1 Cor 3:1–2) — but Isa 28:9 is the nearest scriptural antecedent of teaching figured as feeding. Contested as a deliberate echo.
Low confidence